


if i make it through tonight

by sleepybois_inc (the_ace_place)



Series: Ranboo-centric [3]
Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Anxiety Attacks, Creeper Hybrid Sam | Awesamdude, Depersonalization, Derealization, Dissociation, Enderman Hybrid Ranboo (Video Blogging RPF), Gen, Hallucinations, Hurt/Comfort, Not Beta Read, Panic Attacks, Protective Sam | Awesamdude, Ranboo-centric (Video Blogging RPF), title from "touch tone telephone" by lemon demon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-17 13:54:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29101359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_ace_place/pseuds/sleepybois_inc
Summary: Sam wasn’t soft, by any stretch of the imagination. But he was protective. He was protective of Tommy, and Tubbo, and there was a vulnerable teenager right in front of him that needed help.Or, Ranboo falls apart-- but there's someone there to catch him.(Set after Ranboo's stream 1/30)
Relationships: Ranboo & Sam | Awesamdude
Series: Ranboo-centric [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2135250
Comments: 27
Kudos: 1123
Collections: best smp stories





	if i make it through tonight

**Author's Note:**

> tw // panic attacks, depersonalization, derealization. you are real.

Sam wasn’t soft. 

He _wasn’t_.

He was the Warden. He was the best builder and redstoner on the server. He was stoic, he was strong, and he was tough. The scales creeping around the edges of his skin and the gunpowder in his lungs were enough evidence of that. 

He wasn’t soft. 

But he _was_ human-- at least, partly. He wasn’t soft, but he was empathetic, and he had emotions. 

So when he heard the heart-wrenching scream echo from a place unknown, he decided that it wouldn’t hurt to check and make sure the person was ok. 

If it even was a person, that is. The scream was distinctly unhuman, but he couldn’t identify what mob would make a sound like that, and there were plenty of hybrids on the server.

Another scream echoed out across the lake, and Sam was able to identify the mob. Enderman. A young one, from the sound of it.

Frankly, he was running low on pearls. Although he didn’t kill kids, he could just check to see how young it was, and leave it be or take it down once he found it. Couldn’t hurt to do some grinding, since he’d sunk so much of his time into the prison lately. 

If only he could find where the goddamn thing was hiding out. 

The sound was oddly muffled-- it must have been obstructed by something? Maybe it was in a cave nearby, or muffling its own sound out of fear, or--

Or.

Was the damn thing stuck under the lake, in a cave? Somehow? That was what it sounded like, but surely not. Endermen didn’t venture anywhere remotely near water, especially a large body of it like the one Sam was currently standing beside. 

He sighed.

A bit reluctantly, Sam stepped closer to the edge of the water. He pushed his protective goggles up onto his head and peered closer, searching for some sign of a cave, and was taken aback by the discovery of what appeared to be obsidian.

Another screech rang out-- now that Sam knew where it was coming from, it was painfully obvious that the enderman was definitely somewhere near the not-very-well hidden obsidian.

Sam sighed again, running his fingers down his face in exasperation. He hadn’t been planning on going for a swim, but it wasn’t like he had anything _better_ to do. Sam Nook was done with giving Tommy tasks for the day, and he’d already checked in on Dream-- another guard was now on duty. 

So, somewhat hesitantly, Sam pushed his goggles back onto his eyes, securing his gas mask tightly around his face. He removed his crown, placing it in his inventory, and reached forward to test the temperature of the water. 

It was disappointingly cold.

Well, he had nothing to lose. So he prepared himself, and plunged his first foot into the bitter water. And then the other. After a few steps, it was clearly obvious that it would be much easier to rip off the band-aid and completely submerge himself before he chickened out. 

Taking a deep breath, Sam winced preemptively, and then dove completely into the lake. 

His goggles immediately glowed red, illuminating his way. As he neared the oddly placed block of obsidian, it became clear that there was a passageway flowing down to a room of sorts, hidden away beneath the lake. 

The occasional screeches had not stopped. 

So Sam pulled himself towards the small gap in obsidian, and hesitantly poked his head into the dry, hollowed-out room, which was clearly manmade. There was water condensing on his goggles, and he couldn’t quite see-- so, throwing caution to the wind, he pulled the rest of his body through the gap and gracefully landed on his feet in the obsidian cave. 

He pushed up his goggles once again, and suddenly he was back in that god-forsaken obsidian box, wasting away for hours with his only company being the disturbingly intuitive whispers of the Egg. 

Sam allowed himself exactly ten seconds to panic, no more and no less. Objectively, he _knew_ that he wasn’t in the box, that Bad wasn’t staring down at him smugly before enclosing him in darkness. 

  
So he took ten seconds. 

And once those ten seconds were up, Sam blinked, _hard_. His fingernails dug into the wound on his arm where his flesh had rotted off, and the pain grounded him. 

(It wasn’t the most healthy method of coping, but it _worked,_ okay?)

He looked around, and he was no longer in the obsidian box. He was in a small room, crafted by the same material but somewhat larger than his temporary prison. 

The walls appeared to be frantically disfigured-- it looked like someone had scratched words into the obsidian in a panic. 

YOU ARE FINE.

DREAM IS THE REASON. 

CHOOSE PEOPLE, NOT SIDES. 

It was then, when he was still somewhat recovering from the brief lapse in control, that another scream rang out.

It was significantly louder, and no less heart-wrenching, now that Sam was in the room where it originated. 

And the sudden rush of emotion Sam felt from the screech increased tenfold when he looked to his left, and saw, tucked in a corner, a figure that looked ridiculously small for how lanky he was.

_Fuck_. 

Sam didn’t know Ranboo well. He knew that Tommy and Ranboo were on shaky terms. He knew that Tommy somewhat resented Ranboo for moving in near Techno and Phil. He knew that Ranboo was a fellow hostile mob-hybrid. 

Most importantly, Sam knew that Ranboo was a child. 

A child that was currently curled in the corner of an obsidian room, half-blending into the walls. 

The kid was sobbing uncontrollably, and every so often an enderman-like whimper would escape his lips. It was concerning to note that there were burns tracing their way down the monochrome face, and Sam vaguely realized that tears were made of water.

But what was perhaps most concerning was the look in the kid’s eyes. 

Frankly, he wasn’t quite _there_. Ranboo’s eyes were clouded and glassy, and his pupils had shrunk to slits-- the dual-colored eyes flicked around the room, but it was clear that he wasn’t quite seeing his surroundings. 

“Ranboo?” Sam managed to get out, still somewhat in shock from the situation. 

Another screech escaped the hybrid’s lips, and he somehow started crying harder. 

“Ranboo? Can you hear me, kid?” 

“No!”

“Ranboo?”

“Go away! It’s not real, it’s not real, it’s not--”

“Ranboo, it’s Sam. I need you to breathe with me, ok?” He took a step closer, and an unholy scream burst from the kid’s mouth. 

“Sam isn’t here! You’re not real! You’re not real and Dream’s not real and I’m not real! Go away!” 

Dream? Was that what this mess was all about? 

“Ranboo, I need you to tell me where you are right now.” 

“The ceiling-- it’s falling-- god, I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, _I can’t--_ ” 

“Ranboo! You’ve gotta try, okay? You’ve gotta try to breathe,” Sam called out, slowly inching closer. The younger hybrid still wasn’t quite aware of the Warden’s presence, but he was at least reacting to his words, so he could hear him to some capacity. 

“Where did Dream go? His books... he had to have known, he had to have known, but I got rid of the voice, _but he had to have known!”_

“Ranboo, can you hear me, buddy?” 

“You’re not real, you’re not real,” Ranboo sobbed, his delicate skin blistering under the onslaught of tears. 

  
Sam crouched next to the kid, extending his hands in a calming manner. “Kid, you’ve gotta listen to me,” he said, trying his best to keep a waver out of his voice. “Can I touch you?”

Ranboo neither confirmed nor denied, instead squeezing his eyes shut, clutching a well-worn book close to his chest. 

“I’m gonna try to touch you, okay?” 

Sam received no response, but he didn’t know what else to do. So he reached out his hand, gently removing one of Ranboo’s from its death-grip on the book. Ranboo didn’t show any sign of objecting, so he took that as a win, and moved Ranboo’s hand to Sam’s chest. 

“Can you feel my heartbeat, buddy?” 

“You’re not real,” Ranboo murmured. “Nothing is real.”

“I promise I’m here, kid. You’ve gotta work with me here.” 

“But the Sam earlier wasn’t real!” Ranboo cried. “You were there, at the prison, and so was Dream, but it wasn’t real! You’re just another voice in my head!” 

_That_ threw Sam for a loop. What the fuck was he talking about? Sam had never taken Ranboo to visit Dream-- hell, he hadn’t so much as spoken to the kid in weeks. 

“The ceiling is falling down,” the enderman hybrid whispered. “It’s crushing me and I can’t breathe. I’m dying.”

“No, no, no, you’re not going to die, buddy,” Sam frantically said, trying to remain calm. _Fuck_ , he wasn’t built for this. 

“I can feel your heartbeat,” Ranboo muttered absentmindedly. “Even if you aren’t real, I don’t want you to die too.” 

“Neither of us are going to die, Ranboo.” Sam shifted so he was sitting next to the kid, back leaning up against the cool obsidian. “Listen to me. You need to try to breathe.”

  
“I _can’t_ ,” he sobbed. 

“C’mon, you’ve gotta try,” Sam whispered. “Follow me, okay? In for four.”

Ranboo took a shaky, ineffective gasp of breath, and immediately exhaled in a puff of air, starting to cry harder.

“No, no, it’s okay! Try again. Nice and deep. In for four,” the creeper hybrid encouraged. 

The kid took in another gasp of air, which was somewhat more effective but not good enough to be constituted as _deep_. 

“Great! That’s great. Now hold for four,” he said. 

  
Ranboo was able to hold it for about two seconds, then automatically released it in favor of another gasp of air. 

“I can’t do this. I can’t do this.”

“You _can_. Just follow along with me, all right? In for four.”

Ranboo shuddered, and took in as deep a breath as physically possible, given his current state. 

“Now hold for four.” 

It looked like it took a great deal of effort, but the kid managed to make it to four. 

“Release for four.” 

All the breath trapped in Ranboo’s lungs was released in a sudden puff, and he gasped in another deep breath immediately.

“That’s okay, kid. We’re gonna keep doing this for a while, okay?”

“Okay,” Ranboo whispered. 

And they did. They stayed like that for several minutes, Sam guiding Ranboo through increasingly deep breaths that gradually lengthened into four-second increments. 

_In for four. Hold for four. Out for four. Hold for four_.

Sam was suddenly stricken with a flash of deja vu. The cowering black-and-white teen turned into a flash of reds and yellows, blue eyes glassy with unshed tears. Shaking his head, Sam blinked away the memory, and tuned back into the present. 

“You’re doing great, Ranboo.” And he _was._ The previous hyperventilation had become deep breathing somewhere along the way, and the sobs had become thick, silent tears that slowly rolled down the kid’s face.

Sam took his free hand, and reached up, doing his best to brush away some of the water that harmed the hybrid in such a way. 

“How do I know this is real,” Ranboo whispered. “That this isn’t another dream.” 

Sam gently guided Ranboo’s head until he faced the older man. The teen’s eyes were more present, less cloudy. His pupils weren’t as thin, and some of the confusion was gone. Although he clearly didn’t want to make eye contact, he seemed to register Sam’s presence-- he was staring adamantly at the man’s forehead.

“You’re just gonna have to trust me, kid.”

“I don’t know if I can.”

Sam hummed. “Well, can you tell me five things you can see?” 

“What?”

“Five things you can see.”

“Um? You, I guess?”

“That’s one.”

“The water,” Ranboo murmured. “The obsidian. The words on the walls. My memory book.” 

“Good, good! Now, do four things you can feel.”

“Feel? I can feel your heartbeat,” he whispered. “I can feel my memory book. I can feel my clothes, and my face hurts.”

“Now do three things you can hear.” 

“Um. Your voice. The water outside. My breathing.”

“Ok! Now, two things you can taste.”

“Uh, I can taste the golden carrot I ate earlier. That’s all,” Ranboo said. 

“That’s ok! Can you give me one thing you can smell?”

“I can smell….” Ranboo squinted in confusion. “I can smell gunpowder?” 

Sam huffed out half of a laugh. “That would be me, buddy.” 

“The other Sam didn’t smell like anything,” Ranboo said, staring curiously to the right of Sam’s eyes. 

“That’s because he wasn’t real, Ranboo. But _I_ am real. I’m here, and you’re here, and we’re in an obsidian room, and you’re alive.” 

“I’m alive?”

“You’re alive,” Sam murmured. 

“I’m alive,” Ranboo whispered. “I’m alive.”

“And you’re real, and I’m real.”

“I’m real, and I’m alive.” 

Sam released Ranboo’s hand from where it was still held to his chest, and he pulled the lanky hybrid into his side, allowing himself to take some of the teenager’s weight. Ranboo immediately buried his face into Sam’s shoulder, tears starting anew. 

Sam wasn’t soft, by any stretch of the imagination. But he was protective. He was protective of Tommy, and Tubbo, and there was a vulnerable teenager right in front of him that needed help. And as Ranboo began muttering to himself, “I’m real, and I’m alive,” over and over, Sam smiled sadly. 

“Everything’s going to be okay, kid.”

**Author's Note:**

> I have homework to do but Ranboo's stream made me feel so many emotions that I HAD to get this out tonight. Thanks for reading!


End file.
